My love of cooking and creating recipes started quite literally decades ago. When I was nine years old, I made my first official recipe, with no recipe, a Peanut Butter Skillet Cake. I simply added some self rising flour, granulated sugar, creamy peanut butter, large eggs and some oil to a bowl and mixed it up. I then baked the mixture in a 350*F oven until it was browned on top and looked done. I didn't measure a thing, I didn't even have measuring tools, but I made it. My family of tasters consisted of my Dad, Mom and my big brothers, plus of course my little brothers and sister. I can only recall what my Dad and older tasters reactions' were from so long ago. Overall, they all loved it, we ate the slices warm from the pan, cut like wedges of good ole fashioned cornbread. The cake was somewhat dense and perhaps a bit on the sweet side, but otherwise, not bad for a nine year old . The family and I also had a bit of a tummy ache afterwards, but who says it was by fault of my cake, for certain.
My second experiment was with turkey. I sliced and breaded strips of the turkey breast and cooked it in a frying pan, with scarcely enough oil to create a memorable texture, maybe a little margarine. I then added Worcestershire sauce to the cooked protein and simmered into a kind of 'gravy' I guess you could say. It wasn't that bad actually, maybe even almost good. I was maybe 11 then. I followed no protocol or written recipe, I simply worked with my on hand ingredients. I was still quite 'green' in the kitchen, using only the techniques gleaned from occasionally watching Graham Kerr and The Frugal Gourmet, PBS awesomeness or the ones I had devised in our massive playhouses in the woods. Certain plants with these tiny red berries on each bunch were designated as "chicken" and another "beef", yet others still for greens and other vegetables that we used in our cuisine de art. Mud of course, was the most common ingredient, made from scratch, because we had easy access to water sources and lots of banks and wooded areas from which we could procure dirt, both black and the highly coveted red variety.
Mud became whatever food we could dream of . We made cakes, meatloaves, bread, casseroles, soups, more cakes, pies, you name it, anything we had eaten at home with our families, was recreated in our playhouses, with all the adornments that tiny pebbles, various types of foliage, pine needles , pinecones and acorns could afford us. Man, those were the days...the playhouses of old, produced the most masterpieces, works of inedible art, that in fact, sometimes looked so damn good, we had to take a pretend bite, sometimes a real one, though we always spat it out, laughter erupting through our little crew, proud and unabashed. We worked hard at cooking and cleaning our piecemeal abodes. Hell, we even swept the forest floors in keeping with our duties as females to provide and tend the pretend 'children' and 'home', while our husbands were off at work. LOL. , "Yes, we done come a long way like those Slim a*% cigarettes, from Virginia"...Outcast; Elevators (Me and You) ATLiens album.
Our parents were all out until early evening at work, we were on summer break, we were wards of our older siblings, more unwatched than watched. This was fine, in our rural little village, with our one country store, near the lake, back in the woods, literally over the river and through the woods, where everyone knew everyone, from your sisters and brothers, mother and father, their mothers and fathers, cousins, aunts and uncles, who were also our neighbors and "How's your Mama nem? was more of a statement greeting, as opposed to an actual question. The latter statement/greeting is still king among interactions amongst the people we run into, that either grew up with or worked for or with my Dad and Mom. Though now, it's Mom alone, who they ask about, since Dad decided he had run the race he was born to run and became my Ethereal Guardian in 2009, rejoined once again, with his parents and siblings on the other side, even my brothers Doug and Keith. How time does fly.
I moved up from my mud pies and tree leaf salads to actual physical food when I was around 13. I began to gorge on cookbooks and tutorials, magazines and other media about cooking and the culinary arts. Reading was the most affordable way to experience different cultural and ethnic ingredients. I was memorizing herbs, spices and pairings with foods, long before I actually was able to cook with them. At 15, my first job was in a supermarket, Winn Dixie, where I learned about the fruits and vegetables that we didn't already grow in our gardens at home. I learned more about meats and various cuts therein. When I was 16, while some girls were making scrapbooks about their college room designs, I was making my first cookbook for my college life, from cutouts of various magazines, in the back portion of an album my sister Brenda gave me as a graduation present. The album was filled with my achievements through high school, photos and newspaper clippings, featuring my highlights and awards, a priceless memento from a most thoughtful soul. I gained more and more knowledge through the cookbooks Brenda had on her stand in her kitchen. Every time I went to visit, I would pick them up and read them like the latest teen magazine or romance novel, they were my first true love affair. I remember when I thought Quiche was pronounced "Quickie", only spelled much fancier and Hors d' Oeuvres read "Whores de Ovaries". I thought they didn't sound very appetizing, no pun intended. One, two, skip a few and here I am. I have more stories, but they are for another time... Being a Culinarian was apparently in my veins from the beginning, I just hope I can live up to my destiny's expectations. So far, so good, good enough to eat.
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